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The continual introduction of environmentally conscious manufacturing regulations around the world has given birth to a number of standards, guidelines, recommended practices, and specifications, all designed to help electronics manufacturers cope with their new requirements. And just as manufacturers must learn to sort out the various regulations now affecting their businesses, they must also sort through the documents that have been created to help them.
“There certainly is confusion,” says Stan Salot, founder and chief technology officer, The Salot Bradley Group International (SBGi). SBGi holds and manages a group of companies that helps electronics, electrical, and avionics companies implement global hazardous substance standards.
Salot is also president of the Electronic Components Certification Board (ECCB), which manages the United States’ participation in the International Electrotechnical Commission’s Quality Assessment System for Electronic Components (IECQ). In early 2005, ECCB released its own standard, EIA/ECCB-954, Electrical and Electronic Components and Products Hazardous Substance Free Standard and Requirements. The standard was so well received that it was eventually adopted by IECQ, and released as an international version known as QC 080000, Electrical and Electronic Components and Products Hazardous Process Management System Requirements.
The IECQ specification is only one of several tools that have been created by industry groups and standards developing bodies to help companies respond to regulations such as the European Union’s Restriction of Hazardous Substances directive (RoHS), which went into effect on July 1, 2006. In May 2005, the Electronic Industries Alliance (EIA), the Japan Green Procurement Survey Standardization Initiative (JGPSSI), and the JEDEC Solid State Technology Association released what it termed as the first international guidance document for product material content reporting: the Joint Industry Guide for Material Composition Declaration for Electronic Products.
IPC, an association representing printed circuit board and electronics manufacturing services companies, also offers a number of RoHS lead-free compliance tools, including standards designed to simplify and standardize how companies collect, track, and disclose lead content information. In addition, the British Standards Institution plans on releasing several documents that will provide guidance on RoHS and, more broadly, environmentally conscious design.
Salot says all these tools are valuable to manufacturers. “JGPSSI is a good tool and when I do an assessment I like to see that a company has actually used the JGPSSI as part of demonstrating their compliance. If they’re actually making printed circuit boards, I’m pleased to see them using the IPC lead-free tools to demonstrate that they know what they’re doing and that they’re compliant to the degree that is appropriate for those tools.”
But tools such as these go only so far. Salot believes that the process-based approach that the IECQ Specification advocates is key. “What QC 080000 really does is address the fact that you cannot test hazardous substance free into products. You cannot test for hazardous substances once the parts are made without essentially destroying the product, whether it’s a resistor capacitor or a television or a washer or dryer,” says Salot.
Instead, QC 080000 is designed to help manufacturers establish processes that enable them to identify and control the introduction of hazardous substances into their products. Once certified by an approved supervising inspectorate as being in compliance with a regulation such as RoHS, a company can then market its products as such—and can assure its customers that all of the certified components they use meets the requirements of the regulations they must abide by.
Salot believes the specification will help suppliers of electronic and electrical components alleviate some of the problems that have dogged them since the initial announcement of RoHS—namely, the hundreds and even thousands of separate requests from customers asking them to document their RoHS compliance.
“By having a system in place and by having a third-party assessment, as a supplier I’m telling the world I’ve analyzed all of my products and the processes that are used to produce them according to an internationally recognized specification, and that I’ve done my homework,” he says. “I’ve done everything that I need to do and I can demonstrate that in fact I’m constantly producing products that meet your requirements.”